Earth Science: Alfred Wegener's Seeds of Knowledge

Alfred Wegener’s Seeds of Knowledge
The continental drift theory, the closest explanation that science can offer us about our planet’s truth, was once a small and ridiculed idea by a brilliant scientist who was vindicated in his time. During the 20th century, science has not yet progressed as far as it has today. It did not have the answers to many fields of study and that included a big gap in the knowledge about the geology of the whole planet. The notion that the continents were once grouped, in the countless years in terms of human time that has past, was unthinkable back then. One of the most brilliant scientist, Alfred Wegener was keenly interested in geophysics. He noticed that the continental shape of south America was like a jigsaw puzzle piece when compared to that of the continent of Africa. It was this simple idea that led to Wegener’s inspiration to pursue his study that would be known to us as the continental drift theory. CITATION Ben11 \l 13321 (Waggoner 2011)
During his time, Wegener was able to theorize by studying other fields of sciences that could support his theory that the land masses were connected during the times of ancient prehistory. He studied the existing flora and fauna species in distant locations and concluded that similar ecosystems and evolutionary traits and features were present but could not have happened separately in such a long span of time. CITATION Sci12 \l 13321 (Sci Show 2012)Wegener also burrowed knowledge from the field geology. He noticed that the similar type of land existing in a continent may be found in another continent across the vast sea. It was as if these land masses have drifted apart but Wegener and the scientific community then, did not have the abilities to piece together a conducive answer yet. Another idea of Wegener involved explaining the drift theory with the information burrowed from meteorology and astrology. CITATION Ben11 \l 13321 (Waggoner 2011) He theorized that the spinning motion of the planet could be one of the forces driving the drift of our continents. The “scientific community” ridiculed almost all of Wegener’s ideas during that time but soon after, it has discovered that Wegener’s theories were indeed closest to that of truth.
Our scientific knowledge has long since progressed and has now acquired the concepts and missing links to give light to the Continental Drift theory. Alfred Wegener’s “All-Earth”, in other words, “Pangea”, can now be digitally reconstructed thanks to the vast scientific researches and activity that humanity has done in that long span of time. All of this was thanks to the seeds of ideas planted by Alfred Wegener himself. Today, our scientific knowledge states that our terrestrial continents were only part of a larger plate tectonics whose pieces were grinding together or drifting apart, hidden beneath our vast oceans. C...